Thursday, December 2, 2010

There is still art that needs to be completed, and layouts aren't even done on the Ref book so there are a few pages that haven't even been commissioned yet.

I want you to come up with what the art will be on one of those pages.

Here's how it will work. Leave a comment to this post describing a scene or situation you would like to see as artwork. The art will be full page and black and white. One entry per person.

When I wake up Saturday morning, I will look through the responses and choose the 10 most interesting ideas and make a poll post with those ten choices (write-ins will also be allowed in case you think I'm way off the mark in my 10 selections). The poll will close at the time I wake up Monday morning.

If YOUR suggestion is chosen as the winner, that will be forwarded to the artist and will appear in the product, and you will get a free copy of the box.

If you aren't the winner and I use your suggestion anyway in addition to the winner's idea, you'll get 20% off the box - your entry here gives permission to use your idea - utterly generic ideas given just to get a discount ("people fighting!") will be laughed at.

Hello Mr. Raggi! I've become a big fan of your work, ever since I came across your metal fanzine LOTFP some years ago on a shelf at Aquarius Records in SF. Thought I'd delurk with this attempt at creating game art:

We are in some kind of vast, dark cavern. A labyrinth of glowing cracks, something like a crazed lab rat maze, is dug into the floor. It's a vast construction, and seems to even crawl up the walls of the endless cavern as it recedes into the distance. In a nearer chamber, we look down upon an adventuring party. They are utterly ragged, as if they've been wandering for weeks. They are looking up a narrow staircase that climbs up to our level.

It's now that we realize that there colossal, inhuman shapes hidden in the darkness, looming over the chamber. They are perched on thrones, but are they statues? Or something alive?

An adventurer contemplates how some of his/her body parts are beign removed and substituted by some others from several monsters by a mad scientist in a Frankenstein fashion. These parts don't always match and are not always placed in the correct spot.

Since you said in the past that you wanted to get arrested and you didnt care about respectful presentation of women....

A mad wizard is operating on a live patient, a woman with extremely large breasts wearing a chainmail thong. Her stomach is cut open, she appears to be screaming, and the wizard is pulling what appears to be a dwarf-owlbear hybrid out of her uterus. The wizard is wearing bloody robes with a half-decayed infant skull worn around his neck as a totem. Two more large breasted women are cowering in the corner, also wearing chainmail thongs and with looks of terror on their faces. They have slightly bulging bellies. A man lies on the floor nearby, his genitals are sliced up like a sausage with blood everywhere. A dead dwarf hangs lifeless from a meathook in the corner. An owlbear with a bloody lower torso is slumped over in a prison cell against the far wall.

A church/graveyard scene: A massive, yet tall but bit hulking gravedigger (rather fighting man-ish) swinging his twohanded and sharpened shovel to behead a ghoul bursting forth from the shadows of a crypta, his face bearing a somewhat grim, yet sad mien.The twist: The ghoul is female and seems to be one of the gravedigger's relatives, at least in looks.

A devious looking thief-type character caught up in some sort of vines growing out of a chalice she picked up off an altar while a pair of warriors are battling ghoul/wight type undead, completely oblivious to the plight of their companion(who was probably trying to steal the chalice for herself). The Undead fighting with the warriors are dressed up in togas.

A small group of adventurers come across the corpse of a missing companion, the body obviously drained of all life and blood. Numbed by this horrific discovery, they are unaware of the large vampiric entity looming over them in the darkness...

A female fighter, the red head from the box cover would be perfect, is hanging from a thick chain. The chain is going down a shaft and you're looking at the scene from her level. She's holding on with her legs and left hand, her right is holding her rapier pointed up and impaling a diminutive Pictish human that looks like it had launched itself down the shaft at her, clutching two short bone knives. The body of another Pict can be seen dropping below her, a bloodstain on the wall as if it had just bounced off of it.

There is a dark opening in the side of the shaft just below her, like a pipe, from which a skeletal arm is reaching up to grab her leg.

I was going to joke and say, "Hey, how 'bout a Sparkle Unicorn trotting across a field of clover under a rainbow sky", and then I thought, 'NO! A Unicorn impaling a tall thin haired Elvish figure upon it's horn. It's caught in the gut. Blood and visceral gore has splashed across the white hair and mane of the Unicorn. The Flame Princess is astride the beast, blood splashed in her face and across her breast exposed through a shredded white shirt. She holds her blade high about to hack the Elf from the horn. The shaft of an arrow protruding from her shoulder, more protruding from the Unicorn. It's dusk and it's Autumn. They are in a thin forest of leafless gnarled trees. An unkindness of ravens is silhouetted against the purple and orange hues of the autumn sky.'Yeah, I think that's better than the first idea.

An homage to the other parts of Sword and Sorcery with the cursed rune blade rammed straight through a loved one's chest while in the ether beyond stomr clouds roll that have dark and omnimous shapes similiar to the demon god patrons of the rune blade weilder's people.

We are looking over the shoulder of some sort of undead-a ghoul, a mummy, some kind of intelligent corpse-who is looking in an open window. The corpse has several rats sitting on his head and hanging on his back, and one is whispering in his ear. Through the window we see a father and daughter sitting at a table (playing, eating, reading, whatever), oblivious to what is watching them. Behind them another window is partially open, and a second corpse is crawling in over the sill, with lots of rats waterfalling over the sill as well.

I would say, go for something ala Indiana Jones and The Temple of Evil meets Frazetta:

In one of the lower corners there are some people, presumably PC's , perched behind a rock/peeping over a corner of a corridor. We only see their backs. They are looking into a room/cave lit with torches. In the middle of it there is a group of cultists in robes, each with a meter long candle, chanting. They are circling an ornamented hole in the floor of the chamber, over which a tied naked woman hangs suspend from the ceiling. She is terrified, she screams as the cultist begin to lower her into the darkness and a slimy tentacle reaches out of the chasm and ties around her legs.

Okay, my idea is a little different. I call it Nighclub of the Damned, or Tavern of the Damned to be more in the vein of the fantasy genre. The scene is thus, a scantily clothed female, ( perhaps an elf? ) is dancing in a cage suspended above a table where all manner of evil is watching her dance, a lich, a vampire, perhaps a mad wizard or two. In the background a werewolf could be enjoying the 'all you can devour' buffet of still writhing humans. The bouncer, a flesh golem, could be escorting ( carrying by the leg ) a goblin out the entrance.

Our heroine (the Flame Princess) has kicked open the door of a cabin in the snowy wilderness. Through the open doorway we see mounted on one wall the heads of a dwarf, elf, halfling, and two humans (one male, one female. Lunging forward, hand drawn back to deliver a wicked back-handed blow to the Princess, is her quarry—a fell beast twice her height that looks remarkably like a ten-point buck, save for it standing upright and the diabolical cast in its eyes, the snarl on its black lips, and the row of impressive fangs protruding from its mouth, dripping venomous saliva.

Closer inspection of the scene reveals a small humanoid—a gnome—turning on a spit in the fireplace, and resting on a table, awaiting mounting on the wall, the armored head of knight and the horned-helmed head of a barbarian. Resting beneath a ‘chair’ comprised of human hair is a throw rug of human skin, with patches of hair and bone interspersed in an intricate design.

I'd go a little more subtle. You know Breughel's Landscape with the fall of Icarus? Something like that, but instead of human tragedy/suffering being in the margin, the weird.

So, a peaceful, even pastoral scene, perhaps of a few Amish-looking farmers talking to an adventurer or two, or just among themselves. But one little bit of the uncanny peeks through -- a tree in the background is actually a camouflaged troll, a demonic face stares out from an upper story window, or better yet a barn door is slightly ajar in the background, and you can see a few sides of beef hanging, and among them a side of a butchered human.

So the idea is a few farmers talking amiably to a couple of adventurers. They can't see, but the viewer can, that among the butchered animals hanging in the barn is a human corpse.